If you look at the offer made by Major League Baseball to the players, you’d figure they didn’t care whether there was a 2020 season or not.
And maybe you’d be right.
So BetAnySports customers who are anxiously awaiting the start of the season may be waiting an awfully long time.
Pro-rated salaries OK; revenue share a no-go
The players maintain that the owners extended an offer to play, in effect, a half-season for half-salaries. This is referred to as a “pro-rated” salary. It was an 82-game season, with extra teams making the playoffs. But later, the owners countered with a revenue-share agreement. You see, they claimed they could not bring in enough revenues to make up for stadiums that were without any fans. And that they were going to lose over $4 billion collectively if those conditions persisted.
But the players said, hey wait a minute, you guys already KNEW there weren’t going to be any live fans. So what’s with this nonsense. The 50-50 revenue share was also seen as something that would force the equivalent of a salary cap. And that was a non-starter for the players.
The next proposal goes over like a lead balloon
MLB’s next proposal has ultimately led to speculation that a season might not be happening after all. But let’s take a step back first.
What was expected was for the owners to come back toward the players a little. Perhaps with a proposal for more games or for the players to defer their salaries a little more. Some of this may have seemed reasonable. But what the major league owners came up with was something straight out of left field (pardon the pun).
What they proposed was a salary scale that called for the highest-paid players to take the biggest cuts. Meanwhile, the players at the other end of the scale would be making a much higher percentage of their salary.
So a player like Mike Trout, making $40 million a season, would be making 20% of that. And that would be based on a full season, so Trout’s salary would actually be $4 million. In other words, the stars who draw the people and the viewers are taking the short end of the stick.
Breaking the union?
Of course, while the players have a union, and a rather strong one, one must realize that these are people with many different levels of income. If you are making the kind of money that a guy like Bryce Harper is, you might have a bit of a cushion. But if you are a veteran of only a season or two, and/or making the league minimum, it’s going to cause some problems if you are going without any sources of income. So there are different situations, and the owners appear to be rather transparently making a move to bust the union. And this is also in advance of new collective bargaining talks, which will have to come next year. Are they looking to “soften” things up? It would certainly seem that way.
Kiss the minor leagues goodbye?
They are also working to phase out much of the minor league system. And if they are doing it in a smaller way, they might soon after do it in a bigger way. They have released a lot of minor league players in the last week. And they’d been talking about cutting out 40% of the teams even before the coronavirus caused a crisis. But you could see the owners planting some of the seeds for an eventual phase-out. They wanted to have a central location for games that were going to be played without fans. They were touting a 30-man roster with a 20-man taxi squad. And they are cutting the amateur draft to just five rounds. This struggle is going to be interesting to follow, because the season, as it stands now, is in jeopardy.
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